


Scrubbed Clean with Salt

by TwelveLeagues



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Anal Sex, And Javert is just judging everyone and everything, Angst, Flashbacks, Flogging, Jean Valjean needs a hug, M/M, Rape as Religious Devotion, Sex as penitential rite, hunted with rape as a penalty for getting caught
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 11:53:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15118838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwelveLeagues/pseuds/TwelveLeagues
Summary: In Paris, Jean Valjean has found an unconventional way to cleanse his soul. But a reminder of his past turns his purifying ritual into an ordeal.





	Scrubbed Clean with Salt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).



> Written for nonconathon 2018. I mashed the ‘hunted with rape as a penalty for being caught’ tag together with ‘rape as religious devotion’ and this was what came out. I hope it is suitably unkind to Valjean and I promise to make it up to him in future by writing him nice fic involving hot chocolate and fluffy animals and blankets. Maybe.

The red wine is sharp on Valjean’s tongue. His spirit grows lighter as he descends the staircase. The worst part, after all, is over. He has unburdened himself of six weeks’ worth of unworthy thoughts. 

It is commonly believed that penance is the hardest part of the confessional process, but it is also the most rewarding. A man brings himself back to god not through words, after all, but through action.

Cosette cannot forgive him the terrible things he has contemplated. The bitterness that shrivels his soul when he catches sight of the idler that trails after them in the Luxembourg. To even mention the young man would be to draw him closer. It would give the devil a name and a physical form. Bad enough to live with him as he is now: A phantom at the gates of Valjean’s life but not yet an intruder. 

And so he comes to this small church on the outskirts of the city. And he partakes in its curious confessional ritual. 

He pours out a bleak torrent of half-formed fears. They are worse than he knew. He is drowning in an anger he thought he had left behind in Digne: A grasping jealousy that reminds him of starvation, though he has not felt truly hungry in years. He condemns himself in a thousand ways, but when the words run out, the priest’s voice is as low and even as before. It is a relief.

When he is directed down into the private chambers below the crypt, he is calmer. He has kept these sins contained within himself. They will wash away more easily than most.

The cell is sparsely furnished, lit only by a few candles. A rich incense hangs in the air and fills his senses. A shaft of moonlight from a high window illuminates the curling smoke and gives the stone walls a silver-white sheen. There is a small bed with clean linens, though Valjean knows he will not sleep in it. A white cotton robe is spread out across it. A trunk sits quietly in the corner, which is not for Valjean to touch. 

Instead he undresses, his mind pleasantly quiet, and changes into the garment that lies waiting on the bed. He has never felt entirely comfortable wearing it, even though it is almost as comfortable as the silk shirts he once wore as the mayor of Montreuil. It weighs on him like a stolen cloak. He has no more right to be here than to trespass on the sisters’ services at the convent.

And yet, God help him, he is glad of it, unworthy as he may be. He disappears into the role of penitent as the robe covers his marked flesh. He becomes one of many, even as he commits this act of purification alone.

Naked beneath the robe, he kneels on the cold stone and waits. Sometimes the man arrives immediately, other times he is left in purgatory on his knees until the candles are almost burned down. He does not know if the man is busy with other penitents or if this is simply part of the process.

They are known officially as scourges, but he thinks of each one of them as “the man.” Despite the dark robes that cover their faces, it is clear there are several of them. The man’s height is never quite the same. Sometimes his footsteps are quick and impatient. Sometimes his hands are gentle on Valjean’s skin, but his lash is always sharp enough to drive Valjean’s most wicked thoughts away. He is never appalled by the scars on Valjean’s back. Valjean supposes that most of the backs that are bared for the man’s examination are similarly scarred.

A few months ago, the man slipped and uttered a low curse during the final ritual. His hand, which was already warm and gentle on the back of Valjean’s neck, moved to caress Valjean’s hair. His other hand faltered on Valjean’s hip as he thrust himself forward.

Valjean had muffled a gasp at the unexpected kindness of the touch in this cold and sanctified place. His body too was affected, his hips thrusting of their own accord and pressing forward into the bed’s too-soft sheets. He came too quickly in a bright rush of gratitude, the man’s lips pressed against his shoulder.

Afterwards the man withdrew awkwardly. Valjean was left alone in the cooling room, reeling from the warmth and an unexpected sense of loss. He felt hollowed out. The scourge had not offered him a true penance. Instead of the blinding white clarity of suffering, he was left with nothing but a fading sensation.

The next time he made his confession, the man was a blank slate again, marching him through the ritual with cool efficiency. It has been that way ever since, and that is for the best. Curious as it might seem to outsiders, this has never been about gratification or the comfort of another person’s touch. 

Valjean fixes his eyes on the cracks between the stones, following their uneven paths. His knees are already beginning to ache from the pressure of the floor and he imagines the ache spreading upwards, from his knees into his legs and then up through his torso and further. He imagines the stone spreading through him and engulfing his flesh, until he is nothing but cold stone, incapable of want or misdeed. 

Perhaps he will return here, he thinks, when the boy finally gets his way. When there is nothing left of him but a moving space in the world that was once Cosette’s father. Perhaps then he will be ready to be nothing but cold and still. For now, though, he will only sip from the cup. And then it will be taken from him and he will return to his happy life, more grateful and better for the taste of suffering.

He does not look up when the man arrives. The man makes no apology for the wait, nor does he acknowledge Valjean at all. He moves through the small room restlessly. Valjean hears the bed’s covers rustle, the trunk opening with a groan of its old hinges, the thud of implements being lifted and examined and rejected. 

Finally the trunk squeaks closed and the man draws near, the footfalls echoing against the stone walls. A hand lands on Valjean’s shoulder, and he tenses unexpectedly beneath the familiar gesture. This man’s hand is larger than most. His grip is steel. For less than a heartbeat, Valjean is frozen in his grasp before he remembers where he is and pushes himself into action. 

He has done this more times than he can count. He stands, without turning to face the man. He opens the white robe, allowing it to fall from his shoulders and then lower. A shock of cold air hits his back and his muscles clench. He has never found this part of the ritual easy. It is a thing to be endured, this baring of his body’s secrets. But it can be borne. All of this can be borne. He has proven as much time and time again.

Even the final part, more intimate than revealing his body and sometimes more painful than the lash, can be borne. He endured worse in Toulon, did he not?

No. What happened in Toulon was nothing like this. The act itself is all the two places have in common. The guards’ annual hunt was a vile thing. Men who had already been reduced to beasts were degraded even further, used for little more than sport. 

He exhales and the breath comes in a ragged thread. The man’s gaze is heavy on his back.

*

It only happened once a year. But once a year was enough.

A shrieking whistle tore through the salle at sunrise, marking the beginning of the hunt. Chains were loosed for the day to make the festivities more entertaining. Prisoners were given enough time to begin running before the guards began their pursuit. 

Jean Valjean had been able to escape most years: There were more prisoners than guards, after all, and most of the guards lost interest after the first few hours. The weakest men were the easiest targets. Even the laziest bastard could gang up with a friend and pick out a scrawny prisoner to make use of. But as the strongest man in the bagne, Valjean drew a different kind of attention.

Guards would nudge one another as he passed. The younger, more cocky ones would brag. _That one’s mine come hunting season, just wait and see._ Others would snarl threats at him as the hunt drew closer, promising to pay him back for his slovenliness, his ill manners, his laziness

_Pick up the pace, le Cric! I dare say you’ll move your filthy hide when the hunt begins. Pity._

And it was true. Every year he evaded them, no matter how many guards were on his tail. He had an eye for the sort of places where a man could hide himself away. He could scamper up a wall so there was no way to corner him. And he knew how to be silent. He had listened to other men to be taken as he crouched in hiding, focusing on the rasp of his own breath and blocking out the grunts and cries of the desperate men that surrounded him.

But one year they caught him.

Valjean knew that Cuvillier and Pernet had set their sights on him. The two of them were thick as thieves in the weeks before the hunt. And Cuvillier had taken to shouting obscenities at him from across the courtyard. He kept his head down, ignoring his chainmate’s muttered warnings. He could evade the two of them easily enough. Cuvillier was cruel but slow-moving. Pernet was as slender as a reed and only a little more substantial. He had survived the attention of worse men.

The whistle rang out and he pushed his way out of the salle, shoving his fellow men aside as he made for the docks. There were no work details on the day of the hunt, and it was usually quiet there for the first few hours. A muddy bank sloped upwards towards a promontory, providing enough shelter and enough height to see any threats coming.

He moved quietly, though the sound of his own breath rang in his ears. There was a festive, anxious mood among the prisoners. Some were glad to be free of their chainmates, if only for a day. Others held their partners close, perhaps hoping to shield one another. Some prisoners took advantage of the freedom the hunt afforded, trying to swipe a ration of wine from the distracted guards. But to take such a risk for anything less than freedom was madness to Jean Valjean. 

He pressed onward, ducking his head and dulling his mind as the first few guards moved through his peripheral vision and descended on the slowest prisoners. Valjean kept moving, following the road out to the docks until the sound of the wind and crashing waves were loud enough to drown out the screams.

The bank was quiet as he had expected. It was far enough from the salle and the docks to be out of the way, and it had provided him with shelter for the past three hunts. Valjean lowered himself to crouch behind a large rock, his boots sinking into the thick mud. The sea wind blasted his cheeks until his face and hands were numb.

Valjean glanced backwards, surveying the way he had come. In the distance, the walls and towers of Toulon were as silent and sturdy as ever, betraying nothing of the chaos that was already erupting within it and would soon spill outwards. The uphill path was still. The wind had already swept aside his footprints. It was clear that no one had followed him.

In fact, they were lying in wait for him.

Valjean was just about to exhale when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He shouted in dismay as a cudgel struck him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. And then there were more hands, dragging him away from his shelter and out into the cold daylight until he was on his knees and gasping for air, three pairs of mud-stained boots surrounding him. He curled in on himself and found to his shame that he was unable to breathe, whether from the pain of the blow or the shame at finally being caught or the fear of what he knew would come next.

*

The man’s too-large hand settles again on Valjean’s shoulder and he lurches sideways, seasick. 

But he moves as he is directed, keeping his eyes on the floor as the man guides him to the wall. He flattens his hands against the cold stone, breathing in the sweet incense and murmuring a brief prayer for strength. His heart is racing and it should not be.

So many anonymous men have put their hands on him in this room, but he has never felt a terror like the one that spreads through him. It is like a sickness that begins in the pit of his stomach and crawls outward. He squeezes his eyes closed until there is only bright light behind his eyelids.

*

Cuvillier crouched down and grabbed a fistful of his red smock. A rough hand angled his face upwards. “It’s le Cric all right. Pay the boy, Pernet.”

Distantly he heard the clink of coins being counted and then a sharp clatter. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a brief glint as a few coins fell and sank into the mud. He raised his eyes to see a young guard shoving Pernet’s hand back. The young man’s mouth was a cold, hard line.

“Don’t insult me.”

“Fair’s fair. If you wanted more you should have said so sooner,” Pernet sniffed. But Cuvillier laughed coarsely and pressed his cudgel to Valjean’s jaw.

“Don’t you see? He’s not after money, he wants the same thing you do. A bit of his own back against our most difficult guest. Isn’t that right, Javert?”

The young guard shot a glare at Cuvillier. Pernet looked between them and a slow smile spread across his face.

“Well, why not? From what I’ve heard, le Cric’s never been caught before. Probably never been tested out at all. And god knows, our young friend here hasn’t seen any action since he left his dear mother’s bedside.” 

“And what about before that? Eh, Javert?” A cruel laugh. The young guard drew himself up further. He was looking out to see, his eyes fixed on the horizon. “I thought as much.”

Pernet leered, his eyes moving from the guard to Valjean. Valjean closed his eyes in shame. He tried to twist his face away but Cuvillier’s cudgel held him in place. His arm was wrapped around Valjean’s torso in a vicious parody of an embrace, his face close enough that Valjean could smell the stale wine on his rotten breath. Cuvillier huffed a laugh.

“Two virgins. It’s almost _sweet_.”

Pernet crouched beside him, working at the fastenings of his trousers. The two of them pushed and shoved and lifted until he was on all fours, his head hanging low between his arms. There was no use resisting. The penalty for assaulting a guard was not lifted for the hunt. The guards might as well have hunted sheep or cattle. His hands clenched at the ground beneath him, his fingers disappearing into the mud as they shoved his legs apart and the sea breeze traced the softest parts of his inner thighs.

“Come along then, Javert. You did the hard work.” A delicate finger ran between his cheeks and Valjean grunted miserably. “Time to enjoy the rewards.”

“No.” 

Valjean started, looking up. Javert was scowling down at the three of them. Was this a reprieve? His heart pounded.

“I wanted to catch him, that’s all. I knew you idiots couldn’t and I knew I could. I have no interest in _this_ ,” his mouth twisted. His eyes lingered on Valjean’s, and somehow his gaze was more terrifying than the other guards’ hands on him.

Cuvillier spat. He breached Valjean with a finger, laughing out loud when Valjean gasped at the rough intrusion. A slick wet sound told him that Pernet had his prick out and was working it with his hand, already impatient for his own turn.

“You’re sure you don’t want him? Last chance before I take your place.”

Javert shot Cuvillier a deadly glare but it seemed he had nothing left to say. He turned on his heel. Pernet muttered an insult under his breath but Javert ignored him, striding away and leaving Valjean alone with the guards and salt-flecked blasts of wind and the seeping taste of copper between his teeth.

*

Valjean does not realise he is biting his lip until the first lash falls and he draws blood. He shouts wordlessly against the wall and then he forces himself quiet, ashamed of how quickly control is slipping away.

It is this man, who’s the cause of it. This man with his brisk steps and his large hands that should not frighten Valjean so. There must be a thousand men in Paris with large hands. A thousand who are skilful with the lash. The second blow lands cleanly, laying a stripe beside the first and leaving Valjean breathless. It is nothing. All of the scourges are capable floggers: Not brutal or sadistic like the guards of Toulon. But neat and agonisingly effective with every stroke. This man is no different to the others. And yet. And yet. And yet. The third blow draws a shaking whimper.

Valjean pants, leaning all of his weight against the wall. The man is timing his blows, but each one is a surprise. Sometimes Valjean has time to catch his breath before the next flare of pain, sometimes— there! It strikes. He howls this time, horrified that a flogging can still draw such sounds from him. There is always pain, yes, but there is never fear or despair. He searches for a prayer to lift him above this, but the words have deserted him. He is alone in this room, trapped in here with the man and the lash and his own racing breath.

There is a name on his lips that he cannot bear to speak aloud. Because he knows what is coming next, and the man knows just as well. And to speak the name and make it true would tear him apart.

It cannot be Javert. Javert has never wanted to take this from him. He had his opportunity in Toulon. And then again, years later, when Valjean was in chains again.

*

“You have what you want, then,” Valjean said dully, lowering himself to sit on the floor of Montreuil’s jail cell. Javert’s eyes followed him down and Valjean shuddered. The despair of the bagne was already seeping through him, threatening to drag him under. 

“What I want is irrelevant. I care about what is just.” Javert spoke dispassionately but the words cut a ragged line through Valjean.

“And you call that place just? You have seen the way those poor souls are brutalised for the guards’ pleasure.”

Javert’s eyes did not waver. “The law permits it. It does not matter what I think.”

“You didn’t want it when it was offered to you. I remember that day, perhaps more clearly than you do. You must have been clever to catch me when no one ever could.” The words spilled out of Valjean. He had suffered Javert’s presence in his town, sufferent the memories Javert had brought with him. His silence could only hold for so long. “You must have calculated, as I did, how far from the docks a man could hide himself when there was no guard posted. I did so too. I knew that when I felt the spray on my left side, it was time to begin the climb. I knew that when I heard the call of gulls, I would be safe. Or I would have been, if it weren’t for you.”

“Enough of this complaining,” Javert snapped. “I’ll have none of it.. ‘If it weren’t for you’ indeed. You put yourself in danger the moment you broke the law.”

“They were right, you know. I was an innocent. You were the first to catch me.”

Javert exhaled sharply. “Be silent.”

“The first to catch me and you left me to _them_. And now you have me again. So what will you do now, Javert?” He drew up his knees to his chest, but he kept his eyes on Javert, heart pounding.

Javert stepped closer and Valjean thrilled with terror and anticipation. Javert’s fingers twitched at his side, flexing into a fist and then falling open. 

“Be silent. Or I will make you wish you were.”

“Don’t think I haven’t felt your eyes on me all these years. Do you regret that you walked away?”

And there it was: Javert’s large hand on his shoulder, dragging him up against the wall. Valjean braced himself for a blow or worse. He was stronger than Javert. He could bear some pain. And at least — at last — he would have an answer. He felt as though he had been holding his breath for over a decade.

Javert stepped closer, his teeth bared, until his body was pressing Valjean’s back into the wall. And there, against Valjean’s hip, was the undeniable press of Javert’s erection against his skin. Valjean let out a despairing laugh and Javert’s grip tightened. He spoke directly into Valjean’s ear.

“What I _want_ is of no significance, Jean Valjean.”

The grip loosened and Javert took a step back. Valjean crumpled back down against the wall, breathing hard. Javert looked down at him for a moment, and Valjean recognised the disgust that twisted his mouth.

“You’ll find what you’re looking for easily enough in the bagne,” he said before he left. “But as for me, I dragged myself out of that place and have no intention of returning.”

*

Valjean sags against the wall. The pause between blows has stretched for so long that he’s beginning to think the flogging must have finally come to an end. But it feels wrong. Everything is wrong.

He should be aching and exhausted and blissful by now. Each blow should have drawn forth a prayer of thanks. The pain should have lifted him to the place of quiet devotion he has only found within these walls. He should be ready for the final stage, his mind cleared of all doubt.

Instead his face is wet and his body is a line of ragged scarlet against the grey stone. He knows now that Javert is in the room with him, no matter who the man really is. That old scornful regard is still fixed on Valjean, whether Javert wields the flogger or not. Valjean has felt those eyes on him for so many years, how has he never noticed them before?

The large hand touches his shoulder and he moves to the bed as he is bid, keeping his eyes down. He does not want to look at the man. Atonement will not be complete until the penance has been paid in full. He lowers himself and tries not to think of Javert.

Instead he thinks of the other man. The scourge who was not a scourge. The hand in his hair and the lips on his shoulder.

Valjean wonders sometimes what became of him, that man whose face he never saw and whose voice he only heard once. Sometimes he feels wounded, as though the man stole something unnameable from him. But other times he feels a surge of affection for that unknown man whose duty was to inflict pain and who could not resist offering comfort.

This time Valjean is the one who cannot marshall his feelings, who cannot fulfil his part of the ritual. The man’s fingers press inside him and Valjean muffles a soft cry into the sheets because there is no escaping his own past. Is Javert on the bed behind him, stretching him open? Or is Javert lurking in a corner, his lips twisted in disgust, a phantom conjured up by Valjean’s own fears? 

This is not about physical gratification. It is not supposed to be pleasurable. But it has never been like this. The man’s fingers are rough as they twist inside Valjean. Valjean clenches a fist in the blankets and they might as well be mud. The discarded white robe might just as well be a red smock. Valjean’s back is marked with new stripes to match his old ones, and when the man lines up his prick and pushes it inside him, it is as painful as it was the first time. 

Javert is wrong. Valjean did not allow a man to lay a hand on him in the bagne. He has never sought this out for pleasure. It is a thing to be endured, to soar above. He relinquishes his dignity and allows this anonymous man — these anonymous men — to split him apart so that his soul will be cleansed.

The man is thrusting into him now, setting a punishing rhythm. Valjean buries his face in the covers. He does not think of the one man who treated him gently. He does not think of Javert, who refused him twice. His prick is shamefully hard. He wants this to stop. But he has never tried to stop this, whether he chose it or not. It continues.

Those large fingers curl around his shoulder one last time. The man’s grip is firm. Valjean imagines the neat thumbprint-sized bruise he will leave behind and shivers. It has been almost pleasant, in the past, to carry the marks of his penance with him. These new scars cut deeper, though. They raise his old wounds to the surface and leave him with nothing to hide behind.

The man empties himself into Valjean, who feels all the emptier for it.

And then panting, the man reaches between Valjean’s legs. His hand is dry, but Valjean’s prick is leaking and he slicks the moisture over the head, down his shaft. Valjean sobs at the contact.

He is rough, as the men always are in this, but now that roughness feels disdainful. The shame of allowing himself to be used in this way is worse than the pain of the flogging. The mess the man has left between his legs is worse than the way he stretched Valjean open. Valjean comes. The man wrings it out of him as Valjean twists his hand in the covers and holds himself still.

When the man is finally finished and gone, Valjean does not lift himself from the bed. The incense burns out and dissipates. Valjean exhales shakily and squeezes his eyes closed. He flattens himself on his back, alone in this too-small room, still filled with all the men who have ever had him. And the one who never has.


End file.
